


Salvage Perfection

by Fairfaxleasee



Series: Fenris/Cassia [12]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Dissociation, F/M, Fade to Black, Mild Blood, Suggestive Themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:55:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28119540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fairfaxleasee/pseuds/Fairfaxleasee
Summary: Getting a Satinalia tree does not go the way Fenris hoped (although it does go the way Hawke expected).Set in Act III after doing Fenris's personal questline.
Relationships: Female Hawke & Orana (Dragon Age), Fenris & Orana (Dragon Age), Fenris/Female Hawke
Series: Fenris/Cassia [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2141970
Kudos: 9





	Salvage Perfection

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Lyfurn and Blondentexan for betaing.

Fenris ran a hand through his hair as he took in the carnage spread over Cassia Hawke’s living room. She was out at the markets with Orana so he might be able to do something about the state of things before she saw them, but there was going to be no way to totally salvage the Satinalia tree; its trunk had snapped almost clean through, branches were bent in all directions, and countless needles covered the floor.

Which was why Cass hadn’t wanted it in the first place. He clearly remembered the look on her face when he broached the subject. She had been working on a puzzle, he was supposed to have been helping, but he found he usually slowed her down, and he was entertained enough watching her. He had been playing with her hair, catching locks between his fingers to watch the color change as it caught the light, first bringing out the blue in her eyes, then the grey, but it was the hazel that struck him when she met his gaze. 

“That’s a disaster waiting to happen, Fenris.”

Cass was never one to mince words.

“Possibly, but I still want to have one.”

He still had no idea why he wanted one. Neither of them were overly ‘festive;’ Cass thought the Chantry was, on the whole, ‘ridiculous, illogical, and frankly stupid.’ Of course that was her opinion on just about every institution he could think of, as well as the Qun. And it was, after all, just a tree. But something about watching Cass in her element had made him sentimental, and while it had started off as an errant thought, by the time he had articulated it to her he wasn’t going to be satisfied until he got it. And he knew if he pressed it hard enough she would give it to him.

Of course Cass was still Cass and her first offer had been an entirely reasonable compromise he refused to be satisfied with.

“What if we set one up in your house? No one will get into it there.”

“But I want it here.”

“Fenris, have you MET Squall? Or Dante? Or Sandal?”

Cass had very good points about all three of them. Her mabari was the clumsiest animal Fenris could recall, prone to knocking into anything and everything including walls, poles, and furniture that had been there for years. The cat-thing Anders had given her was still trying to kill everything in the house that wasn’t Cass and liked ambushing feet and ankles from under objects or heads and faces by perching on high furniture. And Sandal’s talent for setting off explosions and starting fires was unrivaled.

“But I want it.” He leaned into her and ran a hand along one side of her neck as he whispered his selfish, irrational demand into the other.

“You want lots of things you can’t have!” She was squirming under his attention; enjoying the sensation but close to being overwhelmed by it. He had to be careful when she got like that. She enjoyed just a bit of pain, something that was just enough to temporarily pull her focus, but beyond that, when it stopped being enjoyable for her, she was far too willing to let herself be hurt, especially for his sake. He had made her promise to tell him when it hurt, and if she really didn’t want to she would say so, but when she wanted to give herself to him, let him adore her, she stopped caring about the hurt. He didn’t. Wouldn’t. Too many people had hurt her too badly already, he wasn’t going to add to her pain. She trusted him so completely that she didn’t care if he hurt her, and he would  _ not  _ betray that trust.

He rested his hand on one side of her jaw and pressed his lips to her other ear, “Please, Cass.”

“It’s a terrible idea!”

He took her earlobe between his teeth and she moaned. He let it go and whispered again, “Please, Cass.”

He hadn’t realized just how far towards her he had been leaning so was genuinely surprised when she was able to grab one of his arms and use his shoulder as a pivot to press against to flip him on his back on the couch and straddle him, locking her knees on his sides.

“Three things,” she held the fingers up in front of his face as she pressed into the center of his chest with her other hand to keep him pinned. “Non-negotiable.”

“Well, I’m hardly in a position to refuse.”

“I know,” she smirked at him and raised her pointer finger, “One: you accept that this tree might not survive to Satinalia.”

“Fair.”

“Two,” she raised a second finger, “I’m going to put up ONE tree in the house this year-ONLY one tree. When something happens to it, which it will, if you want another one, we do it at your house.”

“But-”

She pressed her fingers to his lips. “I said non-negotiable!”

He grinned up at her.

She added a third finger and leaned down until her fingers were the only thing keeping their lips apart. “And three: you keep your damn hands and assorted other parts to yourself until I finish this fucking puzzle. I’ve already had to re-start it twice because Squall keeps running into the table and I’m not doing it a third time!”

She got up, pushed him back to a seated position to reclaim her spot by the couch in front of the puzzle, and went back to work on it. 

He stared in confused disbelief at her for a few seconds before he laughed and shook his head, “You drive an incredibly hard bargain, Cassia Hawke.”

She looked up at him, cocked her head, and grinned, “And you ask for a patently ridiculous thing, Fenris.” She reached over and poked his shoulder at each of her words, “And you know it.”

“I thought we were keeping our hands to ourselves?”

“No,  _ you’re _ keeping things to yourself. And the longer you make me continue this argument, the longer you’re going to have to do it.”

“Well, I hardly want that.”

He had moved closer to her on the couch to get a better look at the puzzle. She had it almost finished. She slided one of the pieces to him. He assumed she had given him one of the easier ones, but she had still managed to fit in about twenty identical-to-him-looking pieces before she had gotten frustrated with his lack of progress and snatched it back to snap it into a place he wouldn’t have thought to put it if he had been staring at the puzzle for hours. He had leaned back on the couch and extended a hand to the puzzle to signal that she should finish it without him. He was looking forward too much to her finishing to slow her down again. He had entertained himself the rest of the time it had taken her imagining what they would do once she was done.

She had gone to get the tree the next day. Although she had pretended to have changed her mind about it when he declined to go with her to pick it out.

“So, you’re the one who wants the tree, which is still a disaster waiting to happen, and you want me to go get it while you stay inside where it’s warm?” She had been trying to glower at him but couldn’t stop the corners of her mouth from twitching.

“And not snowing, yes.”

“ _ Why _ would I do that?”

“Because I want you to.”

“Fenris, this is the most absurd thing anyone has ever asked me to do, and I am  _ including _ all the completely ludicrous things Gamlin wanted me to do when he was drunk!”

“Hmm...that’s entirely possible.”

“Is that all you have to say in your own defense?”

“I don’t have to say anything.”

“Oh? And why is that?” she strode over to him as she challenged his statement, arms crossed under her breasts, head cocked.

He met her challenge and walked her back to the wall. He placed his hands on either side of her head and leaned towards her as he replied, “Because you like me.”

She had abandoned all pretence at a scowl and grinned back at him. “Maybe. Just a bit.”

“You can’t lie to me, Cassia.” 

He ran his nose along her neck. She moaned and tilted her head to expose more of it to him. He pushed her hair back and kissed her jaw below her ear before placing his lips to her proffered flesh. Her neck was her weakness, but she would only offer it so explicitly to him when she felt particularly playful.

_ Who needs a damn tree? _

He slipped a hand under her shirt and slid it slowly up her abdomen aiming for her breasts. Her breasts were his weakness, they were stunning, and endlessly fascinating, and so much fun to touch.

But he hadn’t gotten to that time. He had lifted his hand slightly so he could slide it into her bra, and she had taken the opportunity to slip away from him somehow appearing in the open doorway while he stood in confusion about just why he was grabbing cold, empty air rather than warm, supple flesh.

“Bye, Fenris, have fun staying home by yourself where it’s warm.” Her eyes sparkled as she grinned at him.

She hadn’t waited for a response before she had turned and left. He was somewhat grateful for that as it took him an embarrassingly long time to actually piece together what had happened as he stared at his disappointedly empty hand and bemoaned his own carelessness in forgetting that Cass only offered her neck without being coaxed when she would do practically anything he wanted...or when she had something particularly insidious up her sleeve. Like retribution for sending her out on what she considered a fool’s errand and losing interest in it.

He had been somewhat concerned that she would come back with something other than a tree, so his disappointment had been tempered slightly when she had at least returned with the promised item.

“ _ That’s _ the tree you bought?” 

He had stared in disappointed shock at the maybe four foot fir she and Orana were fitting into its holder.

“Fenris, if you wanted to have an opinion on the tree you should have come with me to get it.”

“I think it’s a very nice tree, Mistress Hawke.”

Cass had cringed slightly at the deferential tone she hated but didn’t feel right asking Orana to stop using as she finished screwing the tree in place. “Orana, I appreciate the sentiment, but you don’t need to defend…”

“Oh, I know. I still think it’s a very nice tree.”

Orana had directed that last part at him. She was, if anything, even more protective of Cass than he was, at least in her own way. Fenris scowled at a corner.

“I was just picturing something...bigger.”

“Fenris, this is going to be dangerous enough once we hang the decorations, any taller…”

But Fenris never heard what worst-case-scenario Cass had pictured in her head.

“She had quite enough trouble getting this tree here  _ by herself _ , she would never have managed a taller one!”

Obviously while Cass had forgiven his refusal to accompany her in the snow earlier, Orana had not. Fenris had to admit she had a point, he hadn’t even considered that Cass would have to somehow get the tree back to the estate. She was incredibly resourceful, but even she would have had a difficult time trying to get the tree he had been envisioning back here. And once he had thought about it, giving the cat-thing another vantage that would be above eye-level to leap down from wasn’t an attractive notion.

“I...take your point.” he had muttered.

  
  


“Fenris, if you really aren’t happy with the way it looks you can come back out with me now to get the decorations, I couldn’t lug both those and this back with me at the same time,” Cass shook the tree a few times to test its stability. She looked between the crown and the holder a few times and shook it a bit harder before she stepped away. She hadn’t seemed entirely satisfied with whatever path her thoughts were following but eventually shook her head and turned to him. “So, you coming this time?”

Fenris could feel the look Orana was giving him from behind Cass. The cat-thing didn’t like her either, but it much preferred her to him and he knew that if he stayed behind again she would use the creature to make sure he was not enjoying himself until Cass returned.

Of course the implied threat had been totally unnecessary. He should never have let her go by herself to get the tree in the first place. He had just been enjoying their game of testing her limits-seeing just how  _ pliant _ she could be-to remember that the tree was something he wanted them to share.

He took her hand and kissed the inside of her wrist before he smiled at her and replied, “It would be my pleasure.”

She smiled back before replying with a simple, “Okay.” But he had heard the ‘thank you,’ ‘I’m glad,’ and ‘I’d miss you’ contained in the word.

Fenris didn’t think he had been that much help picking out the decorations. There had been more times than he would admit when Cass had presented indistinguishable options to him and he had just picked one at random. She must have been preoccupied because it had taken her longer than he had expected to catch on to his trick. Once she did, she had just shaken her head at him and said, “See if I ever ask your opinion about anything again.”

“I’m fairly certain you will.”

It had taken less than five minutes before she wanted him to help her decide between a silver-tinted halla and clear glass horse ornaments.

Now they were both shattered on the floor-the horse was missing a front leg and the halla had lost its antlers. He picked them up along with some of the other ornaments that were still identifiable. A wooden wolf that had acquired mabari teeth marks. A feathered owl with some of the feathers sticking out at odd angles now. The thing that neither of them believed was a cat but reminded her of Dante anyway, Fenris was starting to see the resemblance to the cat-thing now that a few scratches had etched a permanent scowl onto its features. The simple glass ball he had picked because the swirling colors reminded him of her eyes.

He looked over the crime scene again. He doubted they would ever know what had happened. Two of the three prime suspects were in plain sight. Squall was chewing happily on the exposed wood of the trunk between attempts to pick up the whole tree in his mouth to present it to Fenris and Sandal was pulling string out of the garland. Fenris couldn’t see the cat-thing anywhere but that didn’t mean it was innocent in this, it just meant it was smarter than the other two suspects. Whatever had happened to the tree could have been done by any, some, or all of them, and unless what had happened was ‘Enchantment,’ he was never going to know the truth.

He sighed and stuck his head into the hallway to call for back-up. “Bodahn, something happened to the tree, will you please come get Sandal so I can clean it up?”

He could hear Bodahn muttering nervously as he hurried as fast as he could these days to where Fenris was waiting. “Oh dear, oh dear. Mistress’s tree. She’ll be quite disappointed, won’t she?”

Fenris ignored the rhetorical question. “Just please take Sandal somewhere so I can try to fix this before she gets back.”

“Do you really think-”

“No, but I don’t have a better plan.”

Bodahn just nodded. “Come on, me boy. I think there’s still some of the cookies Miss Orana made in the cupboards.”

Sandal turned to him, “Ooh! Cookies.”

Squall dropped the tree and ran in Bodahn’s direction too.

_ Damn dog can’t understand ‘sit,’ ‘stay,’ or ‘get off the damn bed,’ but ‘cookies’ and ‘lunch’ he manages every time… _

Fenris closed the door after them. He didn’t know where the cat-thing was, but it didn’t appear to be in the room and if it wasn’t he didn’t want to give it a chance to enter. A few seconds after he had closed it he heard Bodahn knock at it. “I’ve brought you a broom, Master Fenris,” Fenris had no idea just why or how he had become ‘Master Fenris’ and he wasn’t sure what he thought about it but he didn’t have time to dwell before Bodahn continued, “You, uh, haven’t seen Dante anywhere?”

“No...Are you saying he’s not out there?” Fenris suddenly wanted very much to be on the other side of the door.

“Well, I can’t say for sure but he didn’t hiss at me while I was coming down or getting the broom.”

“Maybe he’s just asleep?”

“Well, that’s possible but I shook the cat food when I was in the kitchen and he still didn’t come.”

Fenris wanted very, very much to be on the other side of the door, but while Cass rarely used this room for anything, the second he made a concerted effort to keep her out of it she would somehow decide she needed to get into it.

“Bodahn, is he out there right now?”

A pause that Fenris assumed represented Bodahn looking around.

“No, not where I can see at least.”

Fenris opened the door slightly and reached his hand out, “Just give me the broom and if you find him let me know.”

“Of course, Master Fenris.”

Fenris closed the door again as soon as he had his arm back in. He adjusted his grip and held the broom like his broadsword. He felt slightly ridiculous being so afraid of a housecat, but this particular housecat had been a gift from Anders, and while Commander Cullen had agreed that it at least wasn’t part demon, he wasn’t prepared to rule out dragon, wyvern, or darkspawn.

He had learned by now that while the cat-thing was more likely to be lurking under something than on something, it was a painful mistake to start looking under things before any possible place it could launch an aerial attack from had been checked. He scanned the shelves. Nothing. He grabbed the broom by the very end of the handle and swept it under the furniture. It would leave him vulnerable in the event of an attack, but it might just extend his reach enough to persuade the cat-thing to try and kill the broom rather than him. Still nothing. He approached the tree. It didn’t seem to be moving any. He poked it with the broom, no reaction. He reached a foot out to kick at the trunk hard enough to move the tree and hopefully shake the cat-thing loose if it was in there. Still no reaction. No hissing or guttural growls that usually warned of an imminent attack.

_ Maybe the damn thing actually was sleeping. _

He adjusted his grip on the broom to sweep away a path through the fir needles and broken glass. If he could get the tree back in the holder standing under his own power, he might be able to keep Cass from noticing...immediately. But as the only other plan he had was to try and shove the thing in a closet and pretend they never had a tree-and he knew that wouldn’t get anywhere-it was what he was going to try. He reached down to grab the crown of the tree and felt a sharp pain in his hand.

Followed by the guttural growls he had been listening for before.

_ I am going to kill that mage… _

He checked his hand. There was a small trickle of blood, but it seemed to be stopping. He cursed Anders again before bending down to check the tree more closely. A clawed paw swiping in the direction of his face made him abandon that plan. There was nothing to be done. As long as the cat-thing was in the tree, and it was, it would stay there until Cass got back, Fenris somehow knew, because it was the one place he didn’t want it to be and because Cass was the only one who could touch it and make it move.

The cat-thing stuck its head far enough out of the branches for Fenris to make out its eyes. It started yowling at him. He glared at it and it moved on to hissing. He and Squall were the only things that provoked this particular level of animosity from the cat-thing. Squall provoked it because he either thought he was a cat or the cat-thing was a dog, or at least that they were the same size and wanted to be playmates. Fenris provoked it because they were equally possessive of Cass and equally annoyed by her tolerating the other.

Fenris hated it when the similarities between him and the cat-thing were so obvious.

As suddenly as it had started, the cat-thing stopped vocalizing and hopped out of the tree before trotting across the floor. It turned to hiss when it passed closest to him like it always did and his eyes followed the path it was on to Cass kneeling in the doorway beckoning it.

The cat-thing rubbed its cheeks on her hand. She stood up and it stretched on her leg begging to be picked up. She obliged and scooped it up and placed it over her shoulder where it lay purring, entirely content.

Cass looked around the room and sighed, “Do we know what happened?”

“Sandal? Squall? That abomination?” he indicated the cat-thing, rubbing against Cass’s neck.

_ It’s doing that just to annoy me… _

“Fenris! Be nice to Dante!”

Fenris held up his bloody hand.

“Dante! Be nice to Fenris!”

The cat-thing stopped rubbing and turned around to glare at Fenris. He glared back.

Cass lifted the cat-thing off her shoulder, “Okay Dante, I need to help clean this up so you go upstairs now.”

The cat-thing chirped at her.

“I know, but if you can’t be nice to Fenris you can’t stay. So do you want to be nice to Fenris or do you want to go upstairs?”

The cat-thing jumped out of her arms and ambled down the hallway. She closed the door behind it before turning to him.

“Sorry, Fenris.”

“You’re not going to say ‘I told you so?’” he tried to laugh.

“Well, I wasn’t...yet.” 

He knew she was trying to lighten the mood but he still couldn’t look at her. “This is exactly what you thought would happen, isn’t it?”

She scrunched up her face and tapped a curled finger on her lips, “Actually, no, this isn’t quite what I thought would happen…”

He looked at her and quirked an eyebrow.

“I had the tree falling the other way  _ into _ the fireplace, while there was a fire.”

He let out an actual laugh at that. Cass had quite a talent for clearly envisioning the worst plausible sequence of events.

“Well, when you put it that way, I suppose this is a relief.”

“Yeah, but most things are a relief when you remember they could be worse. Still, I know this isn’t what you wanted to happen.”

“I just…” he sighed and looked at her, “I wanted to do something special with you for Satinalia.”

“Hmm…” 

She was gazing at the tree with hazy, unfocused eyes. She tapped her lip faster before moving her hand slightly so she could tap at the air in no discernable pattern while muttering to herself.

Usually there was nothing Fenris hated more than Cass disappearing from behind her eyes. But it usually meant that something-pressure, pain, sensations-had finally caught up to her and she had just snapped. And when that happened, there was no way for Fenris to reach her or help her until she found her way back from whatever dark place she was trapped in. He was terrified that one of these days she’d disappear and not be able to get back.

But wherever she was now wasn’t that place. Wherever she was now was somewhere she belonged. It was somewhere she was entirely at peace, despite the furious pace her mind was working at, sifting through possibilities and contingencies to arrive at a solution no one else would have been able to find.

He still had to watch her when she got like this. She wouldn’t deliberately hurt herself like she would sometimes when she was wandering in the dark, but she did become oblivious to what should have been obvious dangers-she had gotten like this once when she was cooking and had tried to use her bare hand to flip a piece of chicken in the pan.

She walked over to the broken tree. She started to break off some of the boughs. She did well enough on the ones that had cracked when the tree fell, but she wanted more for whatever she was doing with them and had trouble trying to break them herself. He intervened when he saw her reach for the fireplace poker to assist in the effort.

“Cass, if you tell me which ones you want I can break them for you.”

She looked towards him. He didn’t think she really saw him when she was like this, but she saw enough of him to partially respond. She gave a quick nod and started pointing out the last few branches she needed for whatever she was doing.

Once she was satisfied with the branches she had, she gathered them up and made to walk to the couch, but Fenris hadn’t been able to sweep the area and didn’t want her stepping on broken glass in her bare feet. He quickly grabbed her and re-directed her to sit on the floor.

She put the branches into a pile and began to glance around the room. He didn’t want her getting up until he could finish sweeping so he knelt in front of her.

“What do you need, Cass?”

She spun her hands around each other and flatly explained, “Tie...stuff.”

“Stay there and I’ll get it.”

He kept one eye on her as he went to the door and called through it, “Orana? Bodahn?”

“Is everything alright in there?”

Fenris flinched slightly at the fear in Orana’s voice. It reminded him of his own when he thought or knew something was wrong with Cass and he couldn’t help. “It’s fine, she’s fine. She needs some twine.”

“Oh, alright. I'll fetch some right away. Are you-”

“ _ Yes _ . She’s fine, Orana, just bring the twine.”

He could somehow see the skeptical look on Orana’s face through the door, but he heard her move down the hallway to get the twine. He could have opened the door to let her see Cass for herself, but he didn’t want to risk letting the cat-thing in while Cass was too foggy to wrangle it.

When he heard her come back he opened the door and reached his hand out, but Orana just ducked under his arm and squeezed into the room before heading directly to Cass.

“I  _ said _ she was fine…” Fenris closed the door behind her.

Orana ignored him and knelt by Cass to offer her the twine.

Cass’s eyes lit up when she spotted it, “Yes! Tie stuff.”

Cass set to work tying the branches together. Orana stalked over to him, gazed disapprovingly at what she considered to be the sub-standard job he had done sweeping so far, and held out a hand to demand the broom. He sighed and begrudgingly relinquished it. 

She set to work re-sweeping the area Fenris had tried to clean up. “You’re not very good at this,” she said simply and inclined her head to what was left of the tree. “You should get that out of here.”

Fenris scowled at her. He wanted to be here when Cass snapped out of her fugue, but he couldn’t seriously suggest that he should be given the job of sweeping while Orana moved the tree; she wasn’t strong enough to get it out of the room let alone the house. He growled discontentedly and went to pick up the tree. 

“You sound just like Dante when you do that.”

He growled louder.

“That too.” Orana tapped the broom impatiently as she waited for him to move the tree out of her way.

_ Damn mage, damn cat-thing, damn gravity… _

Fenris kept cursing anything that crossed his mind that either vaguely annoyed him or in any way caused the current predicament as he dragged the remains of the tree outside, past the cat-thing that swiped at his feet both directions. He ignored it and hurried back to where he had left Cass. Orana stepped back into the hallway when he entered the room and he could hear her beginning to sweep, erasing the trail of needles the tree had left in its wake.

He turned to Cass. She was standing up and examining something in her hands.

“Cass?”

She turned, presented the object to him, and asked, “Does this look round enough to you?”

He smiled at the wreath she had made. The wreath wasn’t quite round, it bore a slightly better resemblance to an egg than a circle, but she hadn’t asked him if it was round, she asked him if it was round enough to him. “I think it looks perfect, Cass.”

“You do?” She seemed surprised as she examined it, turning it slightly in her hands, “I thought at least it needed some decorations.”

He walked behind her and touched her shoulder. She leaned into him and he wrapped his arms around her to embrace her from behind. He placed her hair over one shoulder and rubbed his nose along the other side of her neck. “We can do that,” he whispered to her.

“Okay,” she nodded before twisting slightly in his arms to partially face him, “I know it’s not a tree, but-”

“Cass,” he kissed her just below her jaw, “It’s perfect.”

“Well is it perfect or does it need decorations?”

“Hmmm…” He laughed into her neck, “Both.”

“Both? Fenris, how can it be perfect and need decorations at the same time?” she was trying to sound incredulous but couldn’t keep the laughter out of her voice.

“Because,” he said, trailing kisses down her neck, “it’s perfect, but if you decorate it, it’ll be perfect then too.”

“Ah, I didn’t realize that perfection could somehow exist in two mutually exclusive states.”

“You can’t know everything Cass.”

She laughed and gently shrugged him off. She turned to where the tree had been, then looked around the room in confusion.

“Wait...where’d the tree go? And wasn’t there a mess all over the floor?”

“I took care of it.”

“The mess on the floor? You?”   
  


“Orana...may have helped.”

“Okay, well that sounds more right, but are all the ornaments gone then?”

“Some of them are over there,” Fenris indicated the mantle, “but they’re broken too, just not as badly as the rest of them.”

Cass nodded and walked to the mantle. She took the ornaments Fenris had salvaged and hung them around her wreath.

“Okay...there,” she turned around to show it to him, “What do you think?”

“I already told you, Cass. It’s perfect.”

He reached out a hand to her. She shook her head at him and smiled. She set the wreath on the mantle-they would have to move it later but as long as the door was shut it would be safe enough for the time being. He beckoned to her and she came to him. He watched her easy, languid movements and smiled back as he anticipated what would happen when she got close enough to touch.


End file.
